Measurement needs a fix

Infectious Media launches a report and whitepaper with results showing that nearly all advertisers believe programmatic budgets are held back by poor measurement.

90% could justify more spend with better measurement, according to Infectious Media study

66% of advertisers find measurement ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ challenging

More than half are looking to change approach to measurement

The overwhelming majority of advertisers would be able to justify additional investment into programmatic if they were able to more effectively measure the success of campaigns, according to a new study from international programmatic agency, Infectious Media.

The study, which involved a survey of more than 200 decision-making marketers with programmatic remits in EMEA, APAC or North America, found almost 90% of marketers would be able to justify ‘slightly’ or ‘significantly’ more investment in programmatic with better measurement.

Measurement was highlighted as the top digital challenge for marketers in the survey with 66% of respondents finding accurately measuring campaigns ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ challenging. Maintaining high viewability came second (65%), followed by increasing brand safety protection (64%).

Post-click attribution hugely undervalues the influence of activity higher up the funnel. No one in this industry should believe that the power of display advertising lies within its ability to generate intentional, human clicks.

But our recent survey of over 200 digital marketers shows is it a persistent approach. 57% of them still use total number of clicks as a key metric to measure programmatic performance.

Infectious Media’s survey also found over 92% of advertisers believe providing measurement services is a key part of a media agency’s role. However, 72% said they ‘strongly’ or ‘slightly’ agree that agencies struggle to measure programmatic accurately.

Additionally, the majority of respondents believed that a lack of education and transparency made programmatic measurement difficult, with 64% agreeing ‘completely’ or ‘a lot’ that marketers need more of both to measure programmatic effectively.

Advertisers still reliant on clicks for measurement.

According to the survey, advertisers are continuing to judge the success of their programmatic campaigns on clicks, which was named the most important indicator of success. Some 56% of advertisers described number of clicks as the most important metric, followed by cost per click (45%) and click-through rate (43%). This is despite the fact that click data is often distorted by fraud and has been proven to be an extremely flawed metric for predicting a sale.

The study also found that the majority of advertisers (53%) are currently in the process of changing their approach to display measurement, while 44% are open to the idea of changing.

However, a range of barriers are preventing marketers from evolving their approach. Connecting display measurement to the measurement of other channels topped the list, which was described as ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ challenging by almost 60% of marketers. Other significant barriers included privacy restrictions (57%) and access to relevant performance data (57%).

Martin Kelly, Infectious Media CEO and co-founder, said: “It’s clear from our study that advertisers are waking up to the fact that the measurement model most have relied on for their programmatic campaigns is broken and digital ad spend is being held back as a result.”

“Advertisers are looking to agencies to show greater leadership on how the system can be improved. Unfortunately, most have been content with the easy option of spending advertisers’ money on cheap inventory that meets a given target on clicks, regardless of the risk of fraud or the limited ROI this delivers.”

“Agencies have a responsibility to educate their clients on the more sophisticated approaches that are available, offering them metrics that better fit their business objectives and challenging them to think beyond clicks.”